


Five asses Winona kicked on Jim's behalf

by jenny_wren



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, anti-angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_wren/pseuds/jenny_wren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's not a lot Winona wouldn't do for her son (his washing up maybe, if its that much of a problem he can go buy new dishes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five asses Winona kicked on Jim's behalf

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt for Winona kicking ass on Jim's behalf.

Five asses Winona kicked on Jim’s behalf

1\. Frank

Winona’s ship got back to Jupiter Station ahead of schedule and she managed to swing a seat on a shuttle back to Earth three days early. She didn’t call, wanting to surprise her family. Knowing she would soon receive one of Jimmy’s crunching tackle-hugs of welcome sustained her as she rushed straight from the shuttle onto a flight back to Riverside.

It was dark by the time she staggered out of the taxi onto Kirk land, and she was grubby and exhausted. She left her bag behind the hedge to worry about it later. Taking a deep breath of fresh unrecycled air, and stretching out all her tired cramped muscles, she allowed herself a moment to decompress before making her way up the driveway.

The house was in darkness and the creak of the boards as she walked up the porch steps was loud in the stillness.

A rustle of movement from the far end of the porch stopped her in her tracks, wary of a wild animal. She stretched out and waved her arm about to activate the automatic light, then, blinking in the harsh brightness, turned to face the increased rustling and stared in disbelief.

Jimmy was sitting there, knuckling at his eyes. But he wasn’t the bright, shining son she remembered, Jimmy was sad-eyed, pale and shivering in the chill night air. Winona could feel anger tensing through her as she tried to work out why Jimmy was out here in the cold. As he tilted his head towards her, the light caught his face and what she’d thought were shadows turned out to be dark, ugly bruises.

“Jimmy?”

“Mommy!” He scrambled to his feet and ran until he thumped right into her, arms flinging themselves around her to pull himself as close as he possibly could.

She hugged him back, hands stroking over his head and shoulders.

“Jimmy. Jimmy, what’s the matter?”

He started to tremble, then she realized with horror that he was crying. Jimmy hadn’t cried in front of her since she first left him with his grandparents when he was ten. 

“It’s okay.” She crouched down so she could look up into his wrecked face. “It’s okay, I’ll fix it, I promise.”

He turned his head away from her and pressed his face into her shoulder.

“Jimmy?”

Something banged inside the house, Jimmy flinched and would have run if she hadn’t tightened her grip.

“Boy!” roared a voice. “What the hell are playing at? I thought I told you not to cause any more trouble.”

Winona stared, that sounded like Frank, it couldn’t possibly be Frank, but when the door swung open, it was Frank.

“You little -,” Frank broke off as he realized she was there, “Winona.”

“Yeah,” she pushed herself to her feet, “it’s me.”

“What’s the little brat being telling you? It’s all lies.”

Jimmy whimpered and clung tighter. Winona had absolutely no interest in further conversation.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“What the hell?” growled Frank, he took one heavy step towards her, menace evident in every line of his body.

Winona pulled gently away from Jimmy and prepared to meet the menace head on.

“Looks like I need to teach the bitch some manners as well as the brat.” He swung clumsily, and she stepped smartly to the side to dodge his fist.

Jimmy made an odd gurgling sound and part of Winona died at the thought of her baby facing off against this monster all on his own. Frank’s fist slammed through the air again, and, distracted, Winona stumbled as she dodged.

The gurgling scream came again, then Jimmy yelled, “Don’t you hurt my Mom!”

He flung himself at Frank, small and desperate. Frank batted him away easily and Winona heard the crash as Jimmy hit the side of porch.

The next few moments were nothing but white hot anger. 

When she came back to herself, Frank was a bloody mess sprawled across the length of the porch and a sharp pain in her right hand told her she’d just broken a couple of fingers.

“Ow,” she shook her hand out and blinked twice.

“Mom?”

“Jimmy, oh baby, are you okay?”

“You hit Frank.”

It occurred to her abruptly that Jimmy witnessing yet more violence would probably be one of those things the ‘your child' books would advise against.

“Well, yes baby, I did…” she temporized.

“Good.” Jimmy smiled viciously.

Winona grinned back, then she frowned, “And what were you thinking, young man, running in on a fight? If you’re going to do things like that we need to get you some proper training.”

“Really? You’ll teach me to kick Frank’s ass.”

“I’ll teach you how to kick anyone’s ass.”

His face lit up, “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Jimmy. Now what say we call the sheriff’s office to come take out the trash. And,” she squinted appraisingly at her too skinny son, “we can spring for pizza while we’re at it.”

Winona was gifted with Jimmy's happy tackle-hug, and now she was home.

 

Not Sam

Winona headed after Sam still burningly angry. She knew most of that anger belonged to Frank, and another portion belonged to herself alone for not realizing what sort of monster she’d left her boys with. But above all that, she was furious Sam had just left without even thinking to call her and tell her he was abandoning his little brother to Frank.

When she tracked Sam down to his College though, her eldest son was genuinely horrified and apologetic.

“I didn’t think he’d turn on Jimmy. I thought it was just me.”

Winona wanted to shout that an abuser deprived of his regular prey would naturally turn his attention on the small and vulnerable nearby. She didn’t, because the sheer naivety of Sam’s statement reminded her how young he really was. Sam might be a genius and already in college but he was nowhere near being an adult.

She had let him down too.

“I’m so sorry Sam’ you should never have been in that position in the first place.”

“It’s okay,” he shrugged his shoulders. Winona hadn’t received a hug from Sam, she didn’t feel its absence either. She wasn’t sure which fact upset her more.

She looked again at her eldest son and could feel the yawning distance between them. Sam, who’d never really been orphaned until Tiberius and Annie died within six months of each other last year. 

“Come on Sam, let’s go get your paperwork up to date and arrange for your fees and stuff to be paid.”

“I have a scholarship.”

“I hate to break it you, but they do not cover everything, not even close. And I don’t want you working when you should be studying.”

“Oh, okay. Um, thanks.”

Winona patted his shoulder and received a tentative smile in return.

 

2\. That damn woman

Winona returned to Riverside feeling as if she’d succeeded in stopping Sam slipping any further away and that maybe they’d actually strengthened their relationship. It would never be the same as if Sam had grown up in space with her, like Jimmy had, she’d realized that too late. But now that Sam was striking out on his own he need help and support of a different sort and Winona was hopeful he’d let her supply it.

So she was feeling good when she stopped by the farm and found a message from the school asking her to come into a meeting about Jimmy. Winona was more than happy to comply, she had a few questions to ask the school about their failure to notice one of their pupils was being hurt at home, and she was eager to see Jimmy again. She hadn’t liked leaving him so soon, but she’d needed to find Sam.

The school secretary smiled mechanically in greeting, “Ah Mrs Kirk, please come through, Jimmy is already with the therapist.”

Winona was shown into the room in time to hear the damn woman say,

“You father gave his life for you…”

“Shut the hell up,” yelped Winona, “What kind of crap is that to tell a kid?”

The damn woman jumped, “Mrs Kirk, thank you for joining us. I was just discussing your husband’s heroic sacrifice.”

Winona groaned out loud, the lord save her from George Kirk groupies. She glared at the ceiling, somewhere up there George was laughing his ass off at her.

The damn woman tutted. “Mrs Kirk, I don’t think you understand. James should respect his father’s sacrifice. I am certain his father would be horrified to hear…” the damned woman continued to bleat on about Jimmy’s supposed transgressions.

Winona was prepared to roll her eyes and let the damn woman get it out of her system. She had been putting up with this sort of idiotic crap ever since George decided to pull his idiotic crap. Frankly she found it hysterically funny that some moron who’d never even met George felt they could lecture her on ‘what George would have wanted’.

Then she saw her son’s face. Jimmy looked absolutely devastated and Winona was forcibly reminded that Jimmy didn’t know George either, didn’t know how ridiculous George would have found his little cult.

She tuned back and heard the damn woman say,

“James needs to stop wasting his life, his father would be ashamed to know he died for…”

Winona never found out how the damn woman was planning to finish that sentence, which was probably for the best. As it was Jimmy whimpered like the damn woman’s words were physically hurting him, and Winona was swinging.

At the very last moment she remembered that you do not hit girls, and she managed to convert the punch into a hard, open-handed slap.

“I tell you what my husband would be ashamed of, he’d be ashamed that his hometown failed to step in and help his sons when they were being abused.”

“Mrs Kirk.”

Winona grabbed her by the upper arms, damn woman might be taller but Winona was tougher, and shook her, 

“Shut up, there aint nobody interested in the rubbish you’re spouting. George didn’t die for Jimmy, he didn’t even die for me. George was a Starfleet Captain, he did what had to be done. He would have died just like that if I’d been back on Earth with my feet up on the couch. 

“If you wanna get technical he died because Starfleet designed a crappy auto-pilot that shorted out after one big hit. But some reason they never wanna mention that part.

“So quit trying to guilt-trip my son and fuck the hell off.” She shoved the damn woman away from her,

“Come on Jimmy, we’re outa here.” She grabbed Jimmy’s arm and yanked him out the office. Jimmy tugged at her hand as he trotted along to keep up with her angry strides.

“Did you mean it?” he demanded breathlessly.

“Sure did. Your dad, he might not have died for you, but he thinks the world of you, you remember that.”

Jimmy stared up at her slack-jawed, as if the world was rearranging itself around him. Winona wanted to go kick the asses of everyone in Riverside, she’d grown up since her wild days though, and instead she and Jimmy beat feet for San Francisco.

 

3\. Kodos

Winona wanted to keep Jimmy with her on her next assignment, but George’s sister called and talked a lot about the importance of peer group contact and regularized learning until Winona gave up more or less just to stop the jargon and the hassle. Also she had a sneaking suspicion George’s side of the family had a better grasp on how to raise content, stable children.

Jimmy didn’t want to go, but she pinkie-promised she’d visit and gave him a secret codeword so he could let her know if he needed to be rescued without letting anyone monitoring their conversation find out.

That the last proviso was necessary made her sincerely hate herself, but she honestly hadn’t expected Jim to use the codeword. She figured he just wanted the reassurance of knowing she’d respond. 

So when he called, she was tempted to tell him she’d try and make it out next month. If there was anything really wrong, Susan or her husband would deal with it.

But she had promised, and if Jim needed reassurance, that was her fault too. So she claimed a family emergency and hopped on the closest freighter. A fistful of credits persuaded the Captain to switch his plans and they were heading for Tarsus.

They had based the firing squads at the space port. Holding hangers and a large open space close to bare earth for graves, it was a good pick. As the freighter’s shuttle circled the field, eighteen armed guards were dragging dazed civilians out of one of the hangers, shooting them, and discarding the bodies in a pit at the edge of the airfield.

“Am I actually seeing this?” demanded the Decker, the freighter Captain. He was a huge bear of a man but right now his voice was incongruously small.

Winona said, “They tell us in Starfleet to be careful because it’s easy to misinterpret things, but there’s not really any misinterpreting this is there.”

“Not really.”

One of crew silently handed him a phaser

Decker eyed her appraisingly,

“You up for a fight?”

“You bet I am.” Jimmy was out in that mess somewhere. Grimly, she accepted her own phaser.

The fighting was brutal. There were four crew, the Captain and Winona. Five of the guards went down in their first rush, but thirteen of them scrambled to safety and there was an armored car with a large scale phaser mounted on the hood.

Winona was just about to suggest she act as a distraction, when there was an explosion in one of the hangers, the doors blasted open, and people poured out.

She was only mildly surprised to recognize the blond head of her son at the head of the flood. Later she found out Jimmy had disabled the machine pumping the hanger full of tranquilizing gas and jury-rigged a bomb.

“Jimmy!”

His head whipped around, “Mom!” He fought his way towards her, and Winona took the opportunity take out another two guards.

“Jimmy!” She grabbed him in a tight hug and smacked a kiss to his forehead.

“Mom, you‘re here.” He clung to her with stick thin fingers and Winona wanted to hit people when she realized how slight and frail he was in her arms. Around them the battle was winding down. Jimmy’s head snapped up when the armored car roared to life.

“Kodos is getting away,” Jimmy yelled. Yanking away from her, he raised his phaser and fired rapidly. A good half of his shots went wild, but enough struck home that the car bucked and slid to a stop. Three men scrambled out.

Winona took in the grim hate on her son’s face and made her decision. She flicked the phaser’s power to maximum, and aimed carefully, using her left arm for support. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then fired. Adjusting her aim, she fired again. And again.

Three perfect kill shots. 

Jimmy stared, “Kodos is dead,” he said blankly.

“Yep.” A slight worry hit Winona, “Did you not want him dead?”

“I wanted to kick him a few dozen times first. Maybe rip his insides out.”

“Better that he’s dead then. That sort of revenge just gets messy.”

“Messy is what I would be aiming for.”

Winona looked at the hunger for vengeance in her little boy’s eyes and realized Jimmy had grown up without her. She wanted to rip Kodos insides out too.

“It wouldn’t be right Jimmy. Dead’s okay, torture isn’t.”

“Can I go kick him a few times anyway?”

“Sure.”

They left Decker to deal with the hysterical, panicking Tarsans. Later Decker and all his crew turned down the award of a Federation Medal of Honor for rendering help and assistance to the suffering.

Jimmy, his face contorted with angry hate until it was almost unrecognizable, kicked one of the corpses hard in the ribs.

“Murderer,” he snarled, “I hope you burn in hell.” He kicked the corpse again sending it flopping over onto its back. He kicked the head. “Murdering mother-fucker, I’m gonna fucking eviscerate you.” 

And then Jimmy started to cry.

Collapsing in on himself he shrank down onto his knees and into a shaking, shapeless huddle of cloth. Winona crouched down and manhandled him onto her lap.

“It’s okay Jimmy, it’s okay,” she crooned softly, wrapping her arms tightly around him and rocking him gently.

“It’s not okay,” he stuttered out between sobs, “it’s never going to be okay again. He killed them, he killed them all.”

“I love you, baby,” said Winona as she held him tighter, because that at least was true.

 

4\. Jimmy

She kept Jimmy with her after that. Susan wasn’t around anymore to blather on about regularized learning, and, truthfully, there wasn’t anybody else left. Not that she would have left Jimmy with anyone else. If she had her way she would never let Jimmy out of her sight again.

She settled instead for teaching Jimmy how to jury-rig safer forms of explosion.

He’d said, “I didn’t mean for the kaboom to be quite so loud, Mom.”

“Whatever. If you’re going to mess around with stuff like that, you’re going to learn how to do it safely.”

“Yes Mom.”

“And target practice.”

“Mo-om.”

“You can always get better. If you’re good I’ll get some of your father antique guns out of storage.” George liked antique things, Winona liked guns, antique guns were a great compromise, as was the fast and shiny antique car Jimmy had totaled.

“Will you show me how to make bullets?”

“If you want.”

He hugged her, “Thanks Mom.”

So when Jimmy finally had to return to Earth because Starfleet wouldn’t keep him on as a dependent past eighteen, she was reasonably sure he could take care of himself.

She signed him up for college and challenged him to complete a triple-major, because Jimmy always did better with a goal and she didn’t want him getting bored half-way through his four years and wandering off somewhere.

He succeeded, of course. Winona didn’t make it back for his graduation, she was stuck deep in the guts of a malfunctioning mining mecha-droid that was threatening to destroy the mining settlement, and disrupt critical supplies of dilithium.

Jimmy moved back to Iowa and started being deliberately vague about what he was actually doing, though he was perfectly happy to swap theories about how to fix the mecha-droid.

Finally, once she’d dealt with the mecha-droid and the substandard maintenance crew who’d caused the problem, Winona tracked her son down.

She checked out exactly what he was doing, and when she confronted him, she was mad,

“What the hell Jimmy? You’re working swing shift as a solder-monkey?”

“What?” he drawled, being deliberately obnoxious. “All the local boys work up at Shipyard.”

“A solder-monkey? Anyone can do that job.” Linking up the circuits on the space ships was technically skilled work, so it paid well, but all it required was the basic ability to connect A to B. 

“Yeah, so why can’t I?”

“That was not what I meant and you know it. Jesus Jimmy, this isn’t like you. What happened?”

“Maybe I discovered I was nothing but an uninspired plodder riding on his father’s coat-tails.”

She hit him, one solid punch straight to the meat of his shoulder. He rolled with the blow to reduce the impact, but grabbed his arm as if she’d done more than bruise him.

“Ow, Jesus Mom. What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with me? You’re listening to crap like that, repeating it, believing it? Holy hell, have you gone mad? Idiot!”

Jimmy’s lips twitched, “Uh Mom, you’re not exactly disproving the guy’s point.”

“Shut the hell up, smart ass.” She moved to thump his arm, but he dodged her.

“Uh uh,” he said, wagging his finger, “you get the first hit for free, but that’s it.”

“Oh? You think you can take me do you?” She bounced on her toes in anticipation.

“Hell yeah,” Jimmy bounced on his own toes.

Winona faked right, dodged back, Jim anticipated the move, but she anticipated him and socked him in the jaw.

Jimmy laughed out loud, “I’ve missed you so much, Mom.”

“Me too, baby, me too.”

And then the fight was on. Jim was good enough and tough enough, with the unfair advantage of a man’s pesky extra strength, that Winona only won because he let her. She did however use a sweet little move she’d picked up since they last sparred to take him out at the knees, which made him drop the cocky act and really try.

When the neighbors gave up banging on the walls and started rattling at the door, they finally stopped to draw breath.

“Well,” Jimmy glanced around the trashed room, “there’s no way I’m getting my security deposit back.”

Winona, still too breathless to talk, lobbed a cushion at him.

“You really don’t think it’s true then?” he asked, and she hated the wobble in his voice, “I’m really not just some idiot being carried by his father’s reputation?”

“Listen to me carefully because I’m too exhausted to beat any more sense into you right now, you are ridiculously talented thanks to your father and incredibly stubborn thanks to me. In combination those will take you anywhere you want to go. Just make sure they take you somewhere good, because fuck Jimmy, how have you not died of boredom?”

He shrugged his shoulders, looking equal parts sheepish and mischievous.

Winona held up one hand, “Wait, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“Aww Mom.”

“You can tell me once you’ve left and I’m not obliged to report you. And here,” she tossed a set of keys at him. His hand snapped up and caught them.

“What are these?”

“Keys to the house. As long as you’re in Iowa you might as well use it. This place is a dump.”

“Yeah well, they said one more disturbance and I was out of here anyway.”

“Great. Do I need to make a scene at your work too?”

“No, Jesus Mom, I’m not going to have a reputation left at this rate. I’ll find something else, I promise.”

“Good, you have two months, then I’m going to get inventive.”

Jimmy winced.

“And who’s the moron I need to deal with at your college?”

He laughed harshly, “You’d need to deal with the whole damn college. It’s not worth it.”

“Yes you are.” She kicked his ankle affectionately. “Now I have to go, I’m shipping out from San Francisco tomorrow, they’re having some sort of crisis with the weather control system on Deneb III. Now remember, two months.”

He made a yap-yap-yap gesture with one hand and blew her a kiss.

“Love you too Jimmy.”

It took her a while to figure out what to do about the college and in the end she went with painfully simple. She called in a couple of favors, did a bit of hacking, and James T Kirk suddenly graduated from a different college entirely. Jimmy was going to be publicly recognized as amazing one day, and those bastards weren’t going to be able to claim one particle of the credit.

One minute to midnight on the day of her deadline, she received a time-specified message from Jimmy.

“Accidentally joined Starfleet. Help!”

Winona laughed and set him all her old notes on hacking the Academy systems.

 

5\. Captain Pike

Once she’d rejigged the weather station on Deneb and her broken arm and ribs, from being flung across the room by the shorting system, had healed, she took the opportunity to swing by San Francisco on the way to her next posting. She and Jimmy spent a lovely five hours wandering around the Academy grounds and Winona, for the first time since Jimmy was born, found George stories bubbling naturally to her lips.

She reluctantly cut their time short, because after listening to Jimmy she had some business to see to. Jimmy checked his watch and decided if he ran he could make his last lecture of the day, so they said goodbye and Jimmy dashed away.

Winona tracked Captain Pike down to his office, brushing past the little Ensign who tried to convince her the man was busy.

“What is going on?” Pike demanded, then his eyes narrowed, “Winona Kirk?”

“That’s me.” She shut the door in the Ensign’s face and turned on Pike. “Hear you recruited my son.”

“I did,” he watched her carefully, clearly trying to work out why she was there. “I found him getting into with four Cadets. Couldn’t believe it when the bartender told him who was. George Kirk’s son wasting his life in a bar.”

She hit him then. One fist straight to the jaw. That hadn’t been the plan but the world’s George Kirk fixation really got on her nerves. Pike staggered backwards catching himself on the desk to stop his fall.

“What the hell was that for?” he demanded. He raised one arm defensively but lowered when she didn’t come any closer.

Winona glared, “You take him for himself or not at all. None of this son of the father cr-garbage.” She tried not to cuss in front of superior officers.

Pike, face thoughtful, nodded slowly, “My apologies.”

Winona thought he might actually get it, which meant he had more brains than the average brass-hat.

“And while we’re on the subject, why the he-heck is Jimmy taking three courses of bio studies and one of chem on top of his physics.”

“George Kirk was an amazing scientist. The biologists who still talk about his studies on Rarmun V and what else he would have achieved had he lived. It will be fascinating to see what his son accomplishes.”

She rolled her eyes, alright so Christopher Pike was pigshit thick like the rest of them,

“You wanna rephrase that, or am I gonna have to hit you again? Did you even look at Jimmy’s degree?”

“Klingon language and culture? It’s a good degree, but Kirk’s command track, they’ll want more than a language.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, he took that one for kicks. His real major was engineering, he took a double in mechanical and electrical.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Did you ask?”

“He’s getting top marks,” Pike protested.

“Well of course he is, Jimmy’s good at everything, but at some things he’s brilliant. Just not chemistry particularly and definitely not biology. You want a scientist go recruit Sam, he’s the one who got George’s research skills.”

He huffed a laugh, “All right fine. You‘ve made your point. I’ll get Kirk’s schedule changed.”

“You do that. You’ll know he’s working at his full potential when he starts getting jumped for blowing the grade curve.”

Pike’s face tightened disapprovingly, “Starfleet would never permit such behavior.”

“If you say so,” she said agreeably.

Three months later, while she was recovering from a phaser blast to the head that crisped off most of her hair and left her seeing double for a week, Jimmy commed her asking for the best way to sabotage the showers in the upperclassmen’s dormitories.

She and George had actually collaborated on that one, and to her surprise the remembering wasn’t painful except in a wistful sort of way. Trapped in bed on doctors’ orders, she took the opportunity to send Jimmy a long rambly message she could blame on her medication.

His reply was a two word, “Thanks Mom,” but there was a catch in his voice that hurt her heart.

 

+1 Jimmy again, cause her son was stupid-stubborn

After long terrified hours where all she could understand was that Jimmy was probably dead, Winona ruthlessly called in a couple of long standing favors to get all the facts, not just the fairytale they were spinning for the news vids.

She was furious. Furious with Starfleet for forgetting, furious that they had flung her son at the monster that killed George without even _thinking_ , furious that everyone was saying ‘how could we have expected that to happen?’ as if the idea of one huge ship with technology far beyond theirs had become a total surprise since the last time it happened.

So she wasn’t in the best mood when Starfleet PR arranged to have her shipped back to Earth as quickly as possible.

“Winona Kirk, wife and mother of heroes,” exclaimed the irritating little man rapturously.

“You want me to take up spinning and weaving to complete the picture?” she demanded waspishly.

He ignored her and started talking about camera angles. Winona missed Jimmy fiercely, he’d have got the joke about being a staid Roman matron. She put up with it though because they were shipping her back to Earth. Earth and Jimmy.

So she gritted her teeth through the press conference, and slipped out the backdoor of the hotel - the Fairmont no less, she was going up in the world, it was far smarter than the Hilton they stuck her in after George’s heroics.

Nobody recognized her. The sole advantage of being forcibly dolled up by the PR hounds whenever she made a public appearance was that once she’d washed the gunk off her face she could head into the Academy quietly and unnoticed.

Jimmy made it easy for her, he was actually in his room. He wasn’t answering the door, of course, but his code was easy enough to crack.

He was sitting sprawled across the sofa not watching something mindless and violent on the vid. When he saw her his eyes brightened momentarily, “Mom!” then he flopped back into listlessness.

Winona studied him carefully, he looked worn thin, exhaustion and misery ground into his skin.

There had been at least five separate interviews with James T Kirk, son of the heroic George Samuel Kirk, playing over the vid screens on her trip back. Jimmy’d been the perfect charming confident Captain, expertly fielding intrusive questions about his life and his father. The cost was evident in his grey skin and empty eyes.

“Hey,” she said, sitting down on the couch beside him. “Sit up now you great lummox.”

He shifted obligingly but didn’t say anything.

“So how many medals are you getting out of this? Your father got seven, but I don’t know that you can count the Tellerite Zquil, they only gave him one because they didn’t want to be shown up by the Andorians.”

Jimmy laughed, it sounded cracked but thankfully genuinely amused. He nudged his shoulder against hers, “Thanks Mom, you always know how to make me feel better. And it’s only five so far. Though the Academy are talking about inventing a whole new one just for me. Which given I did fuck all to stop practically two years’ worth of Cadets being blown to smithereens is, I don’t know, _illogical_.”

The snap in the last word made Winona wince.

“Nah,” she said, “you’re young, attractive - well not a troll anyway -”

“Gee thanks Mom.”

“Aw, you’ll always be my cute little baby, Jimmy Tee.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And stop interrupting - you’re young, attractive, male, white,”

“Mom!”

“What? Proper pale skin’s a major plus, has been since they figured out Vulcans, Romulans and Klingons mostly come in shades of tan. And they all admire humans with pale skin too. Of course the Romulans think it makes you the girl, so you might want to consider fake tan there. Or maybe not. It isn’t that I want to think about your preferences, dear, but I can’t help noticing your previous partners -”

“God Mom, shut up.” Jimmy’s face was a brilliant lobster red. 

Winona smirked, operation distraction was working nicely. “So, we have,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “young, attractive, male, white, charming when you want to be, bright enough not to sound too much like a moron. Frankly you’re medal material Jimmy. You need to resign yourself now to the fact that you’re going to get a lot of them.”

“You forgot, son of the martyred George Kirk,” he snarled.

She tried not to let her flinch show, “Oh well, that goes without saying.”

Jim ducked his head, “Sorry,” he muttered.

Winona bumped her elbow against his in forgiveness.

“It’s just,” he threw his hands out helplessly, “I don’t deserve all this fuss.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You should have tried harder. The fleet massacred. All of Vulcan destroyed and you didn’t do anything. Didn’t even try to stop it.”

“I tried,” he protested weakly.

“Pah. It took you far too long to figure out what was going on. And then you nearly got Earth destroyed. Wasting your time on ice planets.”

“That wasn’t my fault.” He sounded a bit more certain about that.

“Yeah, yeah. Running around a Romulan mining vessel without a plan.”

“There _was_ a plan.”

“Cobbled together in five minutes.”

The muscles in his arms and neck bunched and popped as his temper snapped. Hands clenched into blunt fists and his face were pure mad.

“I only had five damn minutes,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth.

Even pushed past his limit, he didn’t get physical, so Winona shoved him hard, then quickly leapt out of his way as he instinctively charged her. She ducked his flying fists, pivoting on the ball of one foot and slamming the heel of her other boot into the muscle of his thigh.

He bellowed like a wounded bull and swung around blindly,

“I did my best. More than anyone fucking else. Pike running off to commit fucking suicide. And bloody Spock wouldn’t listen to a word I said.”

Winona was concentrating too hard on making sure Jimmy didn’t hurt himself or her to pay attention to his actual words, but just from the tone she knew he was defending himself and that was all she wanted.

“I _told_ Pike what sort of shitstorm we were flying into but that didn’t help. And if insane time-traveling Vulcans invent planet destroying tech, you’d think they’d try harder to keep it out of enemy hands.”

Winona crunched the heel of her hand into Jimmy’s eye. Followed it up with a vicious kick to the ribs. It was nastier than she wanted, but fuck, her son had gotten stronger since he’d joined Starfleet.

“Why was the universe relying on me to fix it. How is that fucking fair?”

Fortunately Jimmy was already ground down and clumsy with guilt and grief. His swings grew wider and wilder and his recovery was slower each time. He was staggering now emotion and exhaustion taking their toll.

Finally Winona ended it by sweeping his legs out from under him and following him down, pinning him in an arm lock while he was still stunned from smacking into the floor.

“You gonna listen to me now,” she demanded.

“Let me up.”

She shoved her knee into his back. “You gonna make me break that arm?”

He still struggled against her hold so she twisted her grip until he let out an involuntarily yelp. She didn’t let up.

“Okay, I give,” he said quietly and went limp.

She eased her grip but kept him close, “Alright. Now you listen to me. You know I aint never lied to you Jimmy?”

“I know.”

“And what I got to tell you now, it won’t be easy for you to accept but it’s the truth all the same. You ready to hear it?”

“Yes,” he whispered, soft and fragile, already halfway to broken.

“You did good Jimmy.”

He gasped.

Winona tightened her grip, trying to force acceptance into him, “You did good. You were in a situation that was screwed to hell and back, and you did good.”

His body tensed in resistance to her words, “But I could of…”

She took a deep breath,

“Yeah, there’s a whole load of things you could’ve of done. Most of them would have led to the Earth being destroyed too. 

“There’s a whole load of things Starfleet could’ve done too, and most of them would have been a damn sight more useful than just sitting around on their asses, which is what they did do. How _a lighting storm in space,_ didn’t ring every alarm bell in the place I will never know.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Jimmy. All you can do is your best with what you know at the time. They dropped you in one hell of a mess and you came through. Can’t expect more from yourself than that. 

“You’re right, medals are just puff and PR. Getting them don’t mean nothing. And if you weren’t a PR dream, you wouldn’t be getting half as many. But all that crap, it don’t change the fact that you did good.

“You listening to me Jimmy?”

“Uh.” He wriggled and she let him sit up. He looked like he was maybe thinking about believing her. 

“But if I hadn’t mucked about with Kobayshi Maru…” he began.

“No!” she laughed, delighted and appalled, “They can’t honestly be still running the Kobayshi? Seriously? That’s what you were suspended for?”

“Yes and if I hadn’t…”

“I should damn well hope you mucked around with it. That test is just asking to be fucked over, no-win situation my ass.”

He laughed, “Tell me how you really feel Mom.”

“You know that test was responsible for me and your dad’s first date.”

His eyes went wide, “Go on, this I got to hear,” he tilted his head, eagerly attentive as he always was when she talked about George.

“Well, your dad and I were friends, and I sort of had the feeling he’d like to be more, but he was the first real friend I’d had, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk that.”

Jimmy nodded seriously.

“But I went through the Kobayshi with him, twice. And after the second time he was so damn mopey I got mad. No computer simulation was doing that to my friend. So I signed up for it myself.”

“Yeah?”

“George told me I was being silly but that he take me out to dinner to commiserate when I lost. I told him when I won I was taking him out to celebrate, which wasn’t exactly what I meant to say, but it cheered him up.”

“So how’d you beat it?”

“What makes you think I beat it?”

“Of course you beat it,” said Jimmy with complete conviction. 

She grinned, “You should have seen their faces when I swooped in, rescued everyone and swooped off again.”

Jimmy bounced, grinning wildly and Winona was irresistibly reminded of the happy, hyper, five year old he had been.

“See,” she explained, “I’d noticed the programming was dodgy. They were too busy throwing in unrealistic numbers of Klingons warships to pay much attention to the beginning of the scenario. Both times the first attack hadn’t come until after your dad hailed the Klingons. So I just didn’t hail them and,” she shrugged her shoulders, “no attack.”

Jimmy threw his head back and crowed with laughter, “Way to go, Mom.”

She grinned smugly, still pleased with herself after all these years. “Of course the programmers cried foul, and they disqualified me because I wasn’t command track.”

“What! That wasn’t fair.”

“All puff and PR, everyone who was important knew I’d beaten them. So I took your dad out for dinner, and he insisted on returning the favor and somehow we ended up dating. I’m still not sure how he pulled that off to be honest.”

“Mom? Can I miss Dad even though I never met him?”

“Course you can,” she said roughly, and pulled him into a hug.

 

The click of the door opening had him pulling away and darting up.

“Hey Bones.”

“Holy hell kid,” Bones swore, as he did a double-take at Jimmy’s face. “Where’d you find someone crazy enough to give the savior of Earth a black eye?”

“My mom is the _best _.”__


End file.
